I keep promising to forget about Nestle and their crazy Kit Kat flavour fetish, but somehow I keep coming back for more. It's like passing roadkill on the highway, you can't help but stare at it in a kind of sick fascination. Even though I know that only bad things can happen when you make a carrot and apple flavoured Kit Kat, part of me can't help but wonder, 'How bad?' and before you know it I'm doing another taste test.
Like always, original flavour has a rank of zero. In the unlikely event that the new flavour is better than original, it'll get a postitive score. If it's worse, an negative score. Ready?

First up we have the kinako ohagi flavoured Kat Kat. If you're wondering what kinako and ohagi are supposed to be, and the picture isn't helping you, allow me to briefly explain. Kinako is a sweet brown powder made from soy beans, and ohagi is basically a Japanese sweet made from mochi (rice cake) and red beans. Still reading? Well the red bean flavour has already been kit kat-ized before, and so has kinako, so why not throw them both together with some rice puffs instead of synthesizing some new chemical flavour from scratch? Are we impressed?
I actually like real Ohagi, they're quite tasty, but does that mean by extension that ohagi Kit Kat are also good?
Well no unfortunately, although there are definitely worse flavours out there. I can taste the kinako for sure, but the chocolate and the extra helpings of sugar completely mask the supposed red bean and microscopic rice puffs.

Kinako Ohagi Ranking: -2

I guess Nestle didn't think carrot was quite ready to stand alone in a Kit Kat bar, which is really too bad as it might've been a surprise hit. Teaming up with Ito En, that well known vegetable juice company, they decided to play it safe and included some fake apple as well as a few extra barrels of sugar just to crush any natsy remaining micrograms of vegetable-ness completely out of existence.
On previous Kit Kat postings, people sometimes sarcastically comment with things like: 'Unfortunately the author complains that candy is sweet, and basically states that finding something with artificial flavouring should be an outrage in the 21 century.'
Believe me Cory, you don't know what you're talking about. I've no problem with sugar in chocolate bars, in fact I love sugar! What bothers me is when the amount of sugar used would make a flock of hummingbirds fly screaming for their lives. I kid you not, this thing is sweet enough to give you diabetes just by smelling it. And artificial flavour?? Bring it on! I know for a fact that labs can sythesize almost any flavour perfectly these days, so why doesn't Nestle? What bugs me is the artificial flavours still taste artificial. I want to be able to taste the apples and carrots in my Kit Kat, not the chemicals they used to flavour lollipops in the 1950s. Total Fail!

Apple and Carrot Ranking: -6

Another combination here. Combining flavours together must be Nestle's modus operandi of the month, either that or they've already run out of single flavours.
Instead of just an ume (plum or apricot, depending on who you talk to) flavoured Kit Kat, we've got an ume soda Kit Kat. Ume soda is a popular, and usually alcoholic beverage here in Japan. It's unfortunate that there isn't any alcohol in this sucker as getting drunk is really the only way you're going to enjoy it. It comes in a radioactive green colour which is strange as ume soda is almost the same colour as gingerale. My guess is that Nestle had a warehouse full of bright green food colouring that was just about to expire, and needed to get rid of it somehow.
As usual it's so sweet it overpowers any other flavours that might exist in here, although you can taste a bit of sourness as befitting a plum. I'm getting sick of having to make up sugar anecdotes, can't you just chill with the extra sugar Nestle?

Ume Soda Ranking: -4

Thanks goes out to my buddy Scott over at genfab who found this flavour for me!
Remember when I said all sports drinks in Japan taste pretty much the same? Well when a company releases a 'sports drink' flavoured chocolate bar, it tastes to me like vindication. Even Nestle considers 'sports drink' to be a single flavour entity, not four, not 10,000 or whatever number of sports drinks there are in Japan. Thanks for proving my point guys, but you're not off the hook yet. Sports drinks themselves are boring enough, so can a sports drink flavoured Kit Kat fare any better? Actually it doesn't really taste like vindication, it tastes like a really really sweet sports drink, maybe like eating pure Aquarius powder, except that would probably be more enjoyable and maybe healthier. Still, the flavour is pretty much spot on, and if you're the kind of person who adds sugar to your Pocari Sweat, you're going to love these things.

Sports Drink Ranking: -2

But don't take my word for it! Scott gave me three sports drink flavoured Kit Kats, and I'm going to give two of them away to some lucky readers. The rules are simple. Either subscribe to my RSS feed (in a reader or by email), follow me on Twitter, or stumble this page in Stumble Upon. All the buttons to do so are at the very top of this page on the right. Once you've done so, write a quick comment telling me your name and which one you did. After one week, I'll be sending two random lucky people a sports drink Kit Kat. Good luck!

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